Art Journaling Workshop – April 2016

My posts have been a bit sparse this year, and I apologize for that, but with less than three months to go until the opening of our sibling exhibition at the National Arts Festival, my attention has been elsewhere. However, to keep me sane and balanced I have kept a selection of Saturday mornings open for group creativity, and in February this year we had the first of my Art Journaling Workshops. It was great fun and for those who attended, light relief from the pressure of work and everyday living. It’s a great way to spend a Saturday morning and an opportunity to fulfill those New Year resolutions “to be more creative this year”.

Playing with purple. Sandy lays down her base layer

Translating ideas into images

Using colour expressively

Sandy and Dawn take a mid morning break

Crystal and Jill having fun

Dinah surveys her mornings work

Dawn ponders her next move

Nick absorbed in the process

Belinda, Dinah and Dawn enjoy a chuckle while they work

So what is art journaling, apart from being the latest craze to have hit the Western world?

First and foremost Art Journaling is a fun opportunity to relax and indulge in a bit of ‘me’ time.On the surface of it the process may appear to be child’s play, with fingers in paint, dollops of glue, snipping paper into pieces whilst playing with collage and pages of colourful writing, but don’t be fooled into thinking this is frivolous or meaningless, for below the surface of all this activity run currents of serious thought and great depths of meaning. The process is extremely therapeutic and the themes that participants explore, vary from personal issues that need to be dealt with, to experiences that want to be celebrated. Anything and everything is suitable subject for exploration, so family history, spirituality, miracles, faith, travels, adventures, observations, opinions, personal experiences and poetry are all fertile ground to explore.

The beauty of journaling is that it adds another dimension to the written word and offers a space where one can make one’s thoughts visible through drawings, paintings, scribbles, sketches, maps, photographs and an assortment of techniques that add impact to the imagery and allow for variation in colour and size of fonts and text. It’s a tactile process and allows for a sensory connection to the work. The direct, hands on creativity allows for insights to develop as the pages unfold, which often inspires more writing and desire for visual translation, and so the story goes…

Each designated Saturday morning, students arrive at my studio, enjoy tea and snacks in my abundant indigenous garden and then get down to work or play, whichever way one looks at it. They work on ‘pages’ that will eventually come together as a book, or they work in old books, breathing into them new life.

Our next Art Journaling session will be this next Saturday 16th April 2016, so if you are interested in joining this band of happy creatives, please contact me and book your place. There are only a couple of spaces left!